<p>OK, we discussed this before in several ways, but I tend to think in terms of specific images. For some, retirement might be a hammock between two trees on a lakefront. What is your specific image?</p>
<p>Hmmm…my image is that I’m still working 70 hour weeks, and, my friends and colleagues keep asking “when are you going to retire, or at least slow down…”</p>
<p>Alternatively, I’m bumbling around Europe and various countries in the middle east and perhaps even Africa, taking in all the sights, visiting all the places I’ve read about…</p>
<p>Really alternatively, I finally meet that special someone, and get married. I’m, say, 60-ish, and walking down the aisle. Oh, and there’s a grandchild or two in the wedding party. ROTFL.</p>
<p>We’re living in some little Hobbit house in the Berkeley/Oakland hills. (Little, because it’s just DH & me. Also, it’s all we can afford.) We take walks down the little hilly paths into town, get bread/cheese at the Cheese Board and some super fresh veggies & fruit at Andronico’s. We cross the street to read the menu at Chez Panisse and promise ourselves, as we’ve done it for the past 25 years, that “someday” we’ll have to go there. I’m tempted to buy a Paris restaurant book at Black Oak to research places to eat for our six-week trip to France next fall. Instead, I frugally decide to borrow it from the library because we are, after all, on a fixed income. So we take the bus to the library and during the ride, we discuss spending the winter in Mexico the following year and whether we can bribe the kids to join us with their families.</p>
<p>We are living in a small house near Cape May, just big enough to fit the kids and grandkids when they come to visit. I spend my mornings writing my latest novel, then H and I go kayaking for a few hours. We make a great dinner together from veggies from the garden, then walk down to the beach with glasses of wine to watch the sun set (we’re on the bay side, so there’s water to the east.) A couple times a year we travel, sometimes to a neat foreign place, sometimes a hiking, kayaking or biking vacation in the states.</p>
<p>We’ve spent the past 20+ years in the suburbs as a compromise, in part due to kids and jobs. Once those two issues become moot, H wants to go back to Manhattan and I would like to live on an atoll (Peace Corps stint). We haven’t decided yet whether we will try these dreams (A) separately for two years to see if one or both decides the dream is overrated–no golf in Manhattan or decent libraries on an atoll, or (B) sequentially together, or (C) not at all and just come up with a new compromise like a condo in a college town. It makes for interesting discussions.</p>
<p>I’m living near the beach but only in the winter. I don’t like the beach when the weathers too hot or the beach is too crowded. I prefer the Charleston, SC area, but will settle for Myrtle Beach. I am just taking it easy. I might take a class here or there in things that interest me for the moment. I am hanging out at the library a lot, and the state archives too. I love family genealogy, and I have the time to really do a decent job on my family’s history. In the summer I may head to the mountains, and do exactly what I do in the winter at the beach.</p>
<p>Retire? Scientists and architects never retire! But if I do retire I’ll teach watercolor classes and paint. And do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day instead of just on Sundays.</p>
<p>H and I have a three-bedroom house in New Hampshire or Vermont. From April through November, the weather is fabulous. From November through April, it’s not – but that’s OK because I’m working about 25 hours a week writing and consulting in communications for Fortune 500 companies. About once a month I go down to Boston or NYC to see my clients, and the rest of the time I work from my cozy New England house.</p>
<p>And oh yes – the children live about an hour and a half away, and each is married to a wonderful girl, and each has 2.2. children.</p>
<p>Oh yeah – I’m healthy as a horse.</p>
<p>(And oh yeah – the investments worked out really well!)</p>
<p>Smalllish house, woods or hills, mountains in distance. New England? Pacific Northwest? Outskirts of small town. No traffic, cool clean air, lots of stars visible at night. Kids living within a reasonable country road trip away. Still healthy and active (hiking with dogs preferred). And please, PLEASE let me still have all my marbles…</p>
<p>(I am obviously directionally challenged–I of course meant “water to the west” in my above post.) Sheesh, I may not have any marbles left by then.</p>
<p>(East/west, left/right, we lefties are just guessin’ half the time.)</p>
<p>i spoke with an 85 year old on the phone at work today - and she put me on with her fiance because he needed help with something! I thought it was so cute. She said they are getting married this fall.</p>
<p>My dream retirement image is me living a simple but comfortable life in the Italian countryside where I spend my days helping out with an archaeological dig of a Roman ruin.</p>
<p>My real retirement will probably end up involving a blue vest.</p>
<p>We rent out our humble Berkeley Hills abode to Katliamom. We don’t charge her much, because we’ve deferred so much maintenance while paying college tuitions. She can walk down to Black Oak (if it hasn’t gone out of business), Chez Panisse (the cafe might be affordable, given the relatively low rent she’s paying) and the library, though she’ll discover she has to hike back up the hill because buses don’t run West to East in Berkeley, only South to North. Oh well, it’s good for her.</p>
<p>Husband and I head off to the Peace Corps in Eastern Europe to have an adventure while changing the world. While we’re gone, the kids both find life partners we would be thrilled to welcome to the family and get married, without expecting us to plan or pay for big weddings. They all come to visit us. I write a book about the Peace Corps experience. Two seniors in Slovenia kind of thing… It’s a best seller and finances the next phase of travel to Mongolia, Peru, China, all the places we’ve wanted to go. Then we rent a villa from coureur in Italy, and welcome the kids and grandkids. </p>
<p>Eventually, we head back to Berkeley and find Katlia has kept our house in great shape. We sit in on classes, go to a lot of music. The book of poems I wrote while in Eastern Europe is published and wins a Pulitzer Prize. I’m not sure what my husband is doing at this point, but we’re both ready to settle into being grandparents with all those stories to tell about our travels that no one wants to hear…</p>
<p>Well, I’m down on the Monterey Penninsula for part of the year, and just visit Berkeley for my once a year meal at Chez Panisse. I walk and bike the coastline, feel the spray on my face, and watch the tide roll in and out. In the evenings I play chamber music with friends, and discuss books, read poetry. I grow many flowers and vegetables in the gardens surrounding my cottage. On occasion, my house is a bed and breakfast, and many interesting people come to visit, and I love conversing with them, and cooking them healthy, spectacular meals. My kids are scattered, living wildly interesting lives. We talk and visit often.</p>
<p>The rest of the year, I’m in the mountains of Mexico, and work with primary health care in a village area. My Spanish is fluent, and my knowledge of how to integrate traditional medicine with Western is at an advanced level.</p>
<p>My real retirement-some meagre job that won’t bother the arthritis too much, trying to keep sufficient pennies in the dwinding coffers.</p>
<p>sac, if I can rent your Berkeley hills abode, you can use my eastern europe connections (i’ve a few.) And I’ll even throw in the use of my Denver home in case you want to do some Colorado skiing. And I’ll take lovely care of your house and garden just be advised that I may never leave. I’ll claim your home under some squatters-rights ordinance that just HAS to exist in Berkeley! You live in an awesome part of the world, sac.</p>
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